Hacker News: xyzzyz

New comment by xyzzyz in "New method turns ocean water into drinking water, without waste"

xyzzyz — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 03:14:54 +0000

Yes, that's my point: if you're next to the ocean, disposing of brine is extremely easy.

New comment by xyzzyz in "India's surprise baby bust"

xyzzyz — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 02:19:04 +0000

Exactly. If you subsidize the abundance for everyone, the effect will just be raised expectations floor.

New comment by xyzzyz in "New method turns ocean water into drinking water, without waste"

xyzzyz — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 23:48:48 +0000

If you read the article you sent me, you'll learn that, just as I said, you don't use sodium chloride, aka table salt, aka sea salt, for these purposes.

New comment by xyzzyz in "New method turns ocean water into drinking water, without waste"

xyzzyz — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 22:58:42 +0000

It’s about thermal storage, you don’t use table/sea salt for that, and you don’t need a lot of salt, because the salt is in a closed loop; it’s not being consumed.

New comment by xyzzyz in "New method turns ocean water into drinking water, without waste"

xyzzyz — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 22:54:48 +0000

Brine might be bad to the place you dump into, but crystalline salt is even worse.

Overall though, it’s just such a tiny concern. Ocean is huge. If we kill everything in a 100 foot radius, that’s 0.0000000008% of the ocean being destroyed. Less than a drop in a bucket.

New comment by xyzzyz in "New method turns ocean water into drinking water, without waste"

xyzzyz — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 22:50:46 +0000

Maybe, but dumping crystalline salt is even worse to the spot you’re dumping it on.

New comment by xyzzyz in "New method turns ocean water into drinking water, without waste"

xyzzyz — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 19:28:26 +0000

Brine is very easy to dispose of: you just pump it back to where it came from. Solid crystalline salt, on the other hand, is a hassle.

New comment by xyzzyz in "Anthropic raises $65B in Series H funding at $965B post-money valuation"

xyzzyz — Fri, 29 May 2026 00:44:35 +0000

How are they “not obligated to be truthful”? Lying to investors is literally a crime.

New comment by xyzzyz in "I manage teams without a single call"

xyzzyz — Mon, 25 May 2026 17:47:59 +0000

It's very easy today to transcribe and summarize every call that you have.

New comment by xyzzyz in "Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career"

xyzzyz — Tue, 12 May 2026 16:02:43 +0000

Yes, and by shifting the labor supply curve you can make the laborers worse off, because it will often shift the supply curve of the product they’re making. If labor unions make you pay your workers more, you might need to raise the prices, which will make you less competitive, and reduce your sales, which can result in layoffs, or in preventing new workers from gaining employment.

New comment by xyzzyz in "Supreme Court Limits Voting Rights Act"

xyzzyz — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 22:33:44 +0000

None of what you said responds in any way to the arguments made in the post you are responding to.

New comment by xyzzyz in "US Supreme Court reviews police use of cell location data"

xyzzyz — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 19:10:21 +0000

Sorry, I’m not chilled at all by the prospect that the court can subpoena my data from Goole. It can already issue a warrant to arrest me, and to search my actual home.

New comment by xyzzyz in "US Supreme Court reviews police use of cell location data"

xyzzyz — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 18:19:41 +0000

I hate this change. I loved how the original Timeline worked, and now it's unusable. I don't care about courts subpoeaning my data. I'd love to opt in to previous status quo. I don't care about the loss of "privacy" in the context that was never important to me.

Most people are like me: they don't care about being protected from the courts, because the courts don't pose risk to them, and as a matter of statistical fact, they are correct.

New comment by xyzzyz in "ML promises to be profoundly weird"

xyzzyz — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 00:36:53 +0000

No, they totally grew enough calories for themselves. My grandparents lived like that. They farmed around 15 hectares, which was actually quite a lot. You can easily grew enough calories for your family on 5 hectares, or even less if you have access to modern cultivars and artificial fertilizer. It’s just even poor people like variety, and will trade some of their crops for stuff they cannot make at home efficiently, like sugar, fish, or candy.

New comment by xyzzyz in "ML promises to be profoundly weird"

xyzzyz — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 23:54:32 +0000

Prior to Industrial Revolution, nobody could go hunt in the woods, because the woods were King’s, and poaching King’s game carried death penalty. Situation was similar on the continent: the tiny slivers of remaining wood lands were off limits.

Granted, things were different in the New World, as a result of mass depopulation event following the Columbian exchange. But even there, the megafauna was hunted to extinction soon after the humans first appeared there.

Anyway, the point is that no, prior to Industrial Revolution, the world was of full of scarcity, not abundance.

New comment by xyzzyz in "Student beauty and grades under in-person and remote teaching"

xyzzyz — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 11:21:07 +0000

The research shows that the tests are predictive almost precisely to the extent they test “meta skills”. We can even measure how much individual questions test meta skills vs specific skills. You can learn about this by searching for the terms “factor analysis” and “g-loading”.

New comment by xyzzyz in "Student beauty and grades under in-person and remote teaching"

xyzzyz — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 21:19:08 +0000

Obviously, yes. This is not circular: it is by no means tautological that people who did well on test X will do well on a completely different test Y that tests different knowledge and skills. The fact fact that it does gives strong evidence to the value of using these tests for admission.

New comment by xyzzyz in "Student beauty and grades under in-person and remote teaching"

xyzzyz — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 15:48:17 +0000

All scientific research on this topic points to the conclusion that standardized test results are the single best predictor of subsequent academic performance. Some studies suggest that using GPA in addition to test results improves the prediction accuracy, but the marginal increase is very small, and it increases variance.

Everyone is well familiar with the downsides of standardized tests, but so far, nobody has proposed any alternative that better. Learning to the test is not great, but what’s the alternative? It’s not like anyone knows how to teach things that results in more actual knowledge and skills being attained despite lower test results.

New comment by xyzzyz in "Student beauty and grades under in-person and remote teaching"

xyzzyz — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 12:35:40 +0000

If this is the case, then why doesn’t everyone get the top a score? The answer is, of course, that it’s not so simple, and you can’t just learn to the test.

That’s just like with sports: anyone can learn how to train himself, and anyone can improve with training, but in the end, some people will end up faster, and some people will end up slower.

New comment by xyzzyz in "Nasdaq's Shame"

xyzzyz — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 21:19:31 +0000

Traditional defense contractors have low profit margin because of the cost plus pricing on the contracts. They literally are only allowed to charge the cost they incur plus some fixed profit percentage. As such, they have incentive to drive up the costs, so that their profit, while low percentage, is on high base.

SpaceX wouldn’t need to so that. Companies like Anduril already are trying to win contracts on fixed price model, and if they succeed, they’ll have much higher profit margins than Raytheon et al.